A weekly news editor has claimed journalists are treated “worse than criminals” by court staff after one of his reporters was barred from taking notes in a hearing.
Steve Neale, of East London title the Yellow Advertiser, was forced to involve the Ministry of Justice after the manager of Stratford Magistrates Court told trainee reporter Michael Cox he would need press ID in order to take notes during proceedings.
Michael, who had just begun his fifth day in the job when the incident took place on Friday morning, is currently in the process of applying for an NUJ card and had been sent to the court by Steve, pictured left, with a note written on Advertiser-headed paper explaining who he was.
But court manager Teresa Williams told Michael it was policy not to allow someone to report from the press benches unless they were carrying accredited identification.
Despite Steve confirming Michael’s position over the phone she insisted he wouldn’t be allowed to report from the courtrooms, and it was only after the Ministry of Justice intervened at Steve’s request that Michael was allowed to take up his position.
Steve, who had also attempted to phone the court on Thursday to make them aware Michael would be attending, told HTFP that such problems are being encountered on a weekly basis by his staff.
He said: “I don’t think it’s a willful measure to make the courts secret. I think that it’s a culture that’s crept into our society in the last 10 years that the press is an evil thing and needs to be restricted at all costs.
“Because there’s a lack generally of reporters in courts, when there’s an appearance on the press benches there’s this sort of attitude of ‘who do you think you are?’ We’re being treated worse than criminals.”
A spokesman for HM Courts and Tribunals Service, the executive agency responsible for courts on behalf of the Ministry of Justice, said the incident was “a genuine mistake”.
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Couldn’t agree more – the courts are becoming the new parish councils with their complete abandon to conventional wisdom. Crown Court is particularly bad in some places for vetting who can and can’t own a notepad.
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This type of behaviour is an offshoot of the anti-press culture created by Leveson. Every officious little jobsworth thinks he/she can jump on the bandwagon and make life hard for working journalists. In this instance, the paper did well to follow through and ensure the matter was rectified.
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Justice is no longer being seen to be done – and many court officials couldn’t be happier!
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Court officials are just not used to seeing reporters from local papers. They used to know them by face. But this incident was plain silly.
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Well the court systems a serious joke, one listing officer for over 20 courts in Sussex, and thats if they are not on a fag break, lunch or in the loo!
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Robbo. Rather like trying to get a reporter, and for the same reason. Britain is very short of staff and top heavy with high earners.
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Coroners courts are also known for this.
Not usually the coroner but the officious staff that seem to think they are there to personally prevent the press from reporting anything from the court.
I’ve also heard them actively telling the family not to talk to us, refusing to give names and locking the door of the court when they know press are running late.
One assistant even had the audacity to take me in the corridor and tell me off for not arriving 40 minutes early for the case.
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Or maybe it was a mistake?
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Surely anyone over 18 can go into most courts, with or without a notebook, and take notes if they care to? Actually, you can tweet as well, according to Home Office guidelines. In that respect, courts are public places. You may be restricted as to what you can report, of course, and some courts will be barred to the public anyway.
This seems to be an issue about WHERE the person sat. If I read this right, they were denied access to the press benches by a jobsworth because they could not prove they were a reporter. So, go sit in the public benches and report from there and next time bring your ID. Nothing much has happened here, really, and this is not a challenge to press freedom. Just go sit somewhere else and sort it out next time.
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The entire court system is closing; in part because newspapers can no longer afford to put reporters in there, but mostly because the British class of officialdom is uniquely closed and lacks transparency. No reporters in the courts means officials get used ‘no openness’, so they don’t like it when someone comes along with a pen. In the light of recent events in Paris, it’s even more important that this subject is given a higher profile. The mags and crown courts have become virtually closed. Coroners are in my experience even worse. A message to all reporters, news editors, editors and publishers: I know times are hard; I know no one has any time or money; but let’s all start trying to get out into the courts a little more. Even if it’s once a month. It shouldn’t be this way, but regards open justice it’s use it or lose it.
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Idle Rich _ the reporter was told he could not take notes or ‘report’ from anywhere inside the court. This was later lifted thanks to intervention by the MoJ on request from the YA news editor.
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I know what it’s like with the lack of reporters in court these days. I used to work for a local paper where going to court was seen as a special treat. The news editor there would threaten to not allow you to claim your expenses if you did something he didn’t like (ie speak with a non-regional accent/have an opinion he disagreed with), so I was never able to go quite as much as I’d have liked to, despite his admitting that I was good at court reporting. It was made worse when my patch got taken over by someone who NEVER bothered with court and spent all their time ripping off stories that had appeared in our rivals. But, because she spent her time kissing up to the tyrannical News Ed (the editor was completely ineffectual and let the NE run the show) she got away with murder.
It’s a shame I never worked at the Yellow Advertiser – it sounds like the bosses are a fair bunch who really care about news!
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Where is the editor (as opposed to the news editor) in all this…or don’t they have such a beast at the Yellow Advertiser any more?
Newspapers still rely so much on court copy yet they always leave it to such a powerless organisation as the NUJ to sort the mess out.
Media organisations need to make a stand over this at the highest level. This is yet another example of how dysfunctional the industry has become. No wonder papers are on the ropes.
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Have experienced the idiocy of a few court officials over the years while trying to do my job. The latest was some twerp who butted in when I was trying to quickly check the spellings of a few people’s names at the end of the hearing. I told him that we could go ahead with the news report with the names misspelled and if readers complained we would inform them that it was because of his obstructive actions. The officious berk backed off after that.
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The whole thing’s closing down. It’s very disturbing.
Court clerks have told me, variously, ‘We don’t give out addresses’, ‘I was trained not to give out addresses’, or, ‘You should have been listening when he said it from the dock’ (but how was I supposed to know how to spell it?).
Section 39 orders are arbitrarily placed on any case with the remotest mention of a child. Well-argued, legally sound challenges by the press are uniformly dismissed, often rudely.
At my local coroner’s court, inquests are held behind a locked door, beyond an unmanned reception desk, meaning reporters cannot walk in or out of what staff still bizarrely insist is an ‘open court’. They are excluded unless they’re in reception at the precise moment the officer decides to come and retrieve them.
The inquests are often held 30mins or more before their advertised times. Others do not have advertised times. Others are simply not advertised. Coroner’s officers refuse to give addresses, claiming ‘data protection’ means they can’t give them out ‘unless the family gives permission’.
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